WARN: PREV PG LOSS MENTIONED, CANCER MENTIONED, CURRENT PG MENTIONED
OK, deep breath. Here goes...
My grandmother is 84. She has pernicious anemia and was just diagnosed last September with Wegeners Glanuloma (a type of cancer). They said it would take her 5-15 years to beat it, but it could be beaten if she tried hard. So she did. But she got weaker. They messed up her meds once and she started bleeding internally, and got incredibly weak. She was bed-ridden. She has been doing PT, but still not gaining any strength. Over the last 6 months she has bounced back and forth from my parent's home to the hospital to the nursing home. Two weeks ago she was put in a permanant room in the nursing home and told she wouldn't get to come home at all until she was better. (Noone has the ability to treat her medically at home- she requires extensive meds/therapy).
(Deep breath) She stopped fighting. She's refusing all medical care, giving up. She refuses to eat. She says "just let me die, already." (She has a DNR). She is losing weight rapidly because she isn't eating (she has thrush in her mouth and is refusing to take her meds). She is wasting away. If she continues to refuse treatment, she will live less than a month.
We (my parents, myself and my 2 DC) went to visit her on Sunday for Mother's Day. She wouldn't even sit up and barely acknowledged we were there. I don't think she said 5 words to anyone the entire hour we were there. This is killing me. Seeing my dad watch his mother give up is so hard for me. I have only seen my dad cry a handful of times in his life, and I could tell Sunday he was really fighing back tears. He sat at her bedside, her hands in his, telling her how much he loves her and asking if there was anything he could get/do for her. I had to excuse myself and my kids at that point.
What can I do? I want to be there for my father but he is a very keep-things-bottled-up kind of person. He rationalizes that this is what she wants and he's just respecting her wishes, but I can tell he is agonizing over it.
On another note... my DS is 8yo and VERY aware that Granny is very sick (he saw a lot of her care first-hand when she was living with my parents). Do I take him to visit her or protect him from this? I don't want to scar him emotionally by letting him watch her waste away, (he's already afraid of death because of my pg loss in 2004) but I also don't want to prevent him (or her) from having any special last moments together. I'm torn.
Add to the mix the fact that I'm 25w2d pregnant and I know she will not live to see this baby born. AND I'm super emotional and hormonal. So visiting her even myself is a difficult battle not to burst into tears.
Now I'm crying and cannot see to type.
I will try to edit/post more in a bit (if I'm up to it).
Please feel free to weigh in, I could really use some advice on this subject.
Thanks in advance, Blessings~
Brandi